The big debate whether AI art is ‘real’ art or just a spawn from technology and art theft is ongoing. But the rants of a few individuals on X followed by their respective fan bubbles are signs of increasing nervousness and lack any substance, because they are just repeating the well-known accusations: AI artists aren’t artists at all; they are mere button-pushers; they can’t draw, and their tool of choice is based on theft. So far, so familiar, this kind of argument can go on forever without coming to any conclusion.
It’s hard to predict the future developments of AI-based art, because it’s so depending on technology. Artists jumping into that rabbit hole find themselves not only under pressure to constantly create something new and exciting but to keep pace with technological progress in the first place. This dependency on technology is understandable, because our beloved tools are only a few years old, and the change from niji 5 to 6 required a steeper learning curve than just swapping your brush if you are a traditional artist. Until now, each new generation of AI tools has extended the possibilities; will this go on and on endlessly?
Most of the companies that create AI creator’s tools are very young. Stability AI, the maker of Stable Diffusion, was founded in 2019; Midjourney in 2022. OpenAI, almost a veteran, is from 2015, and Anthropic from 2021. There is no guarantee that the big players (Adobe, Meta, Microsoft, Apple) won’t buy the one or other and integrate them into their tools while abandoning the old user bases at the same time. That would be hard to swallow if your tool of choice would just disappear, or (shudder) become part of Microsoft Office.
Another usually glossed over aspect that deals with the ongoing allegations of theft of intellectual property, like NY Times vs. OpenAI. This is of course not just about intellectual property but about a targeted licensing model that allows content creators charging money for any access to their content. We’ve been there already, so get ready for publishers against (search) technology enterprises 2.0. By the way, they other way round publishers aren’t that picky when using automated text generation, as the recently discovered occurence of the plain word ‘delve’ has shown in several NY Times articles.
You may ask: where’s the art in all this? It doesn’t make sense to lament capitalism and watch others making big money. Art is in the money game for a long time, and AI art won’t change this. But the main purpose of tools like Midjourney isn’t art at all: while art generation is just a by-product, the bigger developments lean towards content creation on a more industrial scale, like creating movies and world simulations for digital twins. There will be debates about art, and high-brow discussions about the satisfaction capability of AI art will replace the current bickering over it rather soon. Big names will finally deign to use this new tool, making people forget about its pioneers.
But this shouldn’t discourage you at all: what we have now is an opportunity of expressing yourself, no matter which of the available tools you are using and how they will be called in the future. It’s an invitation to creativity, a thought-to-art compiler which is always available and ready to use. It strongly reminds me of the first days of internet when you could set up your own homepage and collect everything that was interesting for you. Like any new technology, this is causing insecurity and resentment in many people, and stirs the creative job market. In past times that could have silenced you, but now you have the resonance chamber of social media, and this really reshuffles the cards, because it skips the methods of the traditional art market.
Managing the tools, developing your own style, and shining at social media is the key for any future artist (not just AI artist). The path to success is only possible when all three components are mastered. This is your perspective, no more, no less.